Down and Dirty

Well it has been quite a week for us. It started with trying to recover from our monster Gravel Travel weekend and then get straight back into training. I went out and bashed out a session with the Velo guys which was nice but i haven't done for a while. Thankfully I started to feel a little better by Thursday and pretty good by the weekend which I was very thankful for. 

Skills at Fountains

This week we hosted another schools skills clinic but this time for Sutherlands High School. Some 15 kids attended and a few adults and enjoyed two hours of fun and hopefully informative riding with us around Fountains Valley. It was great to see their enthusiasm and talent and hopefully we will see some future champions coming out of these groups.

Hands on advice

Sunday was also a nice day with kids but this time with Kaitlyn and my little nephew Samuel. We went to the Pretoria show and got to enjoy some rides and watched a bit of horse jumping. The kids loved this even though it felt like a 3hr gym session followed by an hour on a merry-go-round.

Yolande holding onto her oats

Something I also found out last week that i have venis flebitis in my one arm which is basically a blockage in a vein in my arm. The scary thing about this is that a piece of vein has gone rock hard through my inner elbow so then ones mind starts to jump to conclusions. Luckily after a scan and check up from the very informative Dr P DeJager it turns out that all is okay and will just need time to disappear (6weeks). 

This week I will again be doing some field tests which is never exciting but now that I am healthy again and finished with the anti-biotic I am looking forward to some focused training before the next few big races.

Start of  Down and Dirty

However you probably want to hear some of my experience from the Nissan Down and Dirty marathon from last weekend. I had a 20min warm up spin from my house to Cornwall Hill and met the rest of the team there. Andre had everything set-up and attended to all the last min checks. It was chilly at the start but soon warmed up. The start was fast but I was feeling a lot better than last week so positioned myself on Jacques wheel as he was our go-to guy for the day. Race shattered up the first climb and soon there was a split of some 12 riders including Charles and Adrien. Up the long drag I looked back to see Jacques trailing a bit after having to stop and tighten his wheel. I dropped back then worked together with him to get back.

dirty face!

Charles and I spent a lot of time in the wind and Jacques was nicely tucked into the group and AD near us at the front. Through a fast rough corner a heard a "clicking" coming from the bike but then it went away...for awhile. The surges continued, we were racing gutters which was crazy for a mtb race and we had to ride smart because at speed the 26" bikes take a lot more effort to keep in there. We had almost made it to the turn point at 42km after which we had a shot at matching the big wheels on the final couple climbs but then my racing gremlins for 2011 continued. 

The noise I heard earlier was in fact a huge nail that went through the casing but fortunately had sealed till now. I must have hit on the top of the nail then it pushed straight through tearing the side wall. I fixed it with several plugs and a few bombs and then caught back to the third group. About 12km further tire went flat again and that was pretty much game over. 7 plugs and 4 bombs later I finished with a ride time of 2hrs21, good enough for a virtual top 10 even with all the last few km of single track stuck in the 40km traffic but is not much consolidation. So it was another frustrating race for me this season. Jacques brought it to the line with the RECM boys and finished 3rd which i was very pleased about and Adrien and Charles had another solid race. Yolande got herself a 2nd which was fantastic and I am soo happy to see her getting strong again. Advendurance put on a great race so a big hats off to them (2nd weekend running(-;) And like always a big thanks to Doug and MTN/Qhubeka for all of his support.

Thanks Z Cronje for the great pics!

This weekend also was the World Cup finals which was held in Champery, Switzerland. Yolande and i watched it on Freecaster TV which showed the XC and DH live. Our South African heros put up a great fight but it was not to be this year but they did a great job keeping us entertained. It is great to see the talent we have and just hope to see some of these athletes grow through the years and get to great places!

36inch monster!

One last bit of interest: check out this 36inch unicycle with an internal gear hub, hydraulic brakes, tri-bar and a bell!! Very cool!

Thanks for reading, PC